“Low?” he cried. “You, Jack, don’t know the guy we’re so dead keen to help out. If you did you’d git right up on to your hind legs an’ cuss terrible—an’ you’ve cussed some in your time. But for him this camp wouldn’t be the bonanza it is. You wouldn’t be nettin’ a pile of dollars every night in my bar. I wouldn’t be runnin’ a big proposition in dollar makin’. These boys wouldn’t be chasin’ gold on full bellies. Gee, it makes me mad—an’ thirsty. Let’s get around inside an’ see what that glass rustler of mine can do.”
The response was immediate and complete. No man had ever been known to refuse Beasley’s hospitality. Everybody drank. And they drank again at Diamond Jack’s expense. Then later they drank at their own. And all the while Beasley, with consummate skill, shepherded them to his own ends.
It was truly wonderful to see the manner in which he handled them. He adopted the simplest tactics, once he had set the ball rolling, contenting himself with dropping in a word here and there every time the subject of the sheriff drifted toward his ears. He knew these men. He possessed that keenness of insight into his customers which no successful saloon-keeper fails to acquire. He understood their weaknesses in a manner which left it a simple enough task to play upon them. In this case the basis of his procedure was drink—strong, harsh whisky, of a violent type.
The banking clouds rose ponderously upon the hilltops, blacking out the twilight with an abruptness which must have held deep significance for men less occupied. But the dominant overcast of their minds was the coming of the sheriff. For many of them it was far more ominous than any storm of nature.
The bar filled to overflowing. No one cared to gamble. There would have been no room for them, anyway. Even Diamond Jack showed no inclination to pursue his trade. Perhaps this was the most significant feature of all.
His was a weighty word thrown in the balance of public opinion. Perhaps this was the result of his well-understood shrewdness. At any rate he never failed to find a ready audience for his opinions, and to-night his opinions were strongly and forcefully declared. Beasley listened to him with interest, and smiled as he observed him moving about amongst the crowd drinking with one, treating another, his tongue never idle in his denunciation of sheriffs, and all those who called in their aid. It almost seemed as if the man was acting under orders, orders, perhaps inspired by a subtler mind, to disguise the real source whence they sprang.
The gambler was truly a firebrand, and so well did he handle his people, so well did he stir them by his disgust and righteous horror at the employment of a sheriff in their midst, that by nine o’clock the camp was loud in its clamor for retribution to be visited upon those who had brought such a terror into their midst.
Beasley’s amiability grew. His bartender watched it in amazement. But it oppressed him. His pessimism resented it. He hated joy, and the evidences of joy in others. There was real pleasure for him in Diamond Jack’s hectoring denunciations. It was something which appealed to him. Besides, he could see the gambler was harassed, perhaps afraid of the sheriff himself. He even envied him his fear. But Beasley’s satisfaction was depressing, and, as a protest, he neglected to overcharge the more drunken of their customers. Beasley must not have all the satisfaction.
But, as far as Beasley was concerned, the bartender was little better than a piece of furniture that night. His employer had almost forgotten his existence. Truth to tell, Beasley had lost his head in his disease of venom. One thought, and one thought only urged him. To-night, before the advent of the sheriff to seize upon the person of the hated Padre, he hoped, by one stroke, to crush the heart of Buck, and bow the proud head of the girl who had so plainly showed her dislike and contempt for him, in the dust of shame and despair.
It was a moment worth waiting for. It was a moment of joy he would not lightly forego. Nor did he care what time, patience, or money it cost him. To strike at those whom he hated was as the breath of life to him. And he meant to drink deeply of his cup of joy.